It was billed as Julian Assange's "explosive" TV debut. The choice of word was perhaps unfortunate given that the first guest on Assange's much-hyped interview show, The World Tomorrow, was Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Shia militant group Hezbollah.

The Kremlin propaganda channel Russia Today has exclusive initial rights to the show, broadcast for the first time on Tuesday around the world. To be fair, Assange had scored a genuine coup. Nasrallah last spoke to the media six years ago. The interview was conducted via a video link – Assange was in Norfolk, his guest at a secret location, presumably Beirut. (The portly cleric clearly doesn't get out much, and spends most of his time underground, dodging Israeli missiles.)

But Assange's debut interview wasn't quite the incendiary event that Russia Today had promised. The questions were clearly agreed in advance. Some were softball, others fawning, with Nasrallah's answers unchallenged.

The White House won't have liked what it saw: at one point the editor of WikiLeaks called Nasrallah a freedom fighter who had "fought against the hegemony of the United States". The implicit comparison was with Assange himself, whose disclosure of US secrets continues to enrage the Pentagon.

But it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that Assange isn't one of TV's naturals. His delivery was stilted. Assange has done numerous media interviews since WikiLeaks propelled him to global fame in 2010. And a simultaneous translator was on hand to turn his questions into Arabic. But the results were debatable. One Twitter user described his interview style as "engrossing". But others dubbed it "like a robot", "painful to watch", and punctuated with "shots of Assange nodding sagely while HN drones on".

Assange was at his best when he asked Nasrallah why Hezbollah supports the Arab spring across the Middle East, but not in Syria. His worst moment came when he prompted the cleric to recall how members of the Lebanese resistance had outwitted the Israelis by using homespun village phrases such as "cooking pot" and "father of the chicken". Julian began his question in the manner of a lost tourist who has accidentally stumbled on an English phrasebook: "Do … you … remember … this … joke?"

The most insidious aspect of Assange's show is not what is in it, but what isn't. Russia Today – now styled RT – is state-owned and Kremlin-controlled. It is remarkable for how little reporting it devotes to what is going on inside Russia today. There is no mention, for example, of top-level corruption, Vladimir Putin's alleged secret fortune – referenced in US embassy cables leaked by WikiLeaks – or the brutal behaviour of Russian security forces and their local proxies in the north Caucasus.

Instead, the channel offers a shiny updated version of Soviet propaganda. The west, and America in particular, is depicted as crime-ridden, failing, and in thrall to big business and evil elites. RT's favourite theme is western hypocrisy: "How dare you criticise us when you do the same?" The English-language channel portrays itself as "anti-mainstream". In reality it reflects Putin's own conspiratorial, touchy and xenophobic world-view while staying mute about Russia's own failings.

The mystery is why Assange should agree to become a pawn in the Kremlin's global information war. Perhaps he needs the money. Assange's anti-American agenda, of course, fits neatly with the Kremlin's own. Russia prides itself on having undesirable allies; expect Venezuela's Hugo Chávez or Belarus's Alexander Lukashenko on future shows. In Tuesday's interview Nasrallah expressed support for the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad. By happy coincidence this is Moscow's position.

It's inconceivable, meanwhile, that RT would interview Doku Umarov, the Islamist leader whose followers are fighting a vicious war in southern Russia, and whom Moscow regards as a murderous terrorist. (When the Australian TV channel ABC interviewed one of Umarov's predecessors, Shamil Basayev, who was later assassinated, the Kremlin expelled the channel from Russia). Nor is Assange likely to interview leading critics of the Russian regime.

US cables released by WikiLeaks in December 2010 paint a dismal picture of Putin's Russia as a "virtual mafia state". Has Assange read them? It seems extraordinary that Assange – described by RT as the world's most famous whistleblower – should team up with an opaque regime where investigative journalists are shot dead (16 unsolved murders) and human rights activists kidnapped and executed, especially in Chechnya and other southern Muslim republics. Strange and obscene.

There is a long dishonourable tradition of western intellectuals who have been duped by Moscow. The list includes Bernard Shaw, the Webbs, HG Wells and André Gide. So Assange – whether for idealistic reasons, or simply out of necessity, given his legal bills and fight against extradition to Sweden – isn't the first. But The World Tomorrow confirms he is no fearless revolutionary. Instead he is a useful idiot.

• This article was amended on 18 April to make clear that it was a TV review.